... Bringing Great Jewish Stories to Life
The story set against the backdrop of 1940’s Brooklyn is about a friendship with unlikely beginnings. Two boys living five blocks away and two worlds apart, one from a Hassidic dynasty, the other Modern Orthodox, meet by chance at rival baseball game. When they realized that they had been looking at the same ideals of Judaism through difference lenses and gave each other a chance, they found they had more in common than they once thought. Adapted for the stage by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok from the novel by Chaim Potok.
I'm Not A Comedian...I'm Lenny Bruce, written by and Starring Ronnie Marmo and directed by Joe Mantegna, chronicles the life and death of the most controversial and undisputed comedic legend of all time ... Lenny Bruce. Ronnie Marmo's exploration of the brilliant life and legacy of Lenny Bruce paints an intimate portrait of the ground-breaking comic whose outspoken views about sex, religion and power structures made him a target for censors. His passion for free speech led to a number of obscenity charges and arrests, all the way to the Supreme Court. His freestyle comedy and irreverent social commentary left a lasting impact that paved the way for many comedians who followed.
Its 1949 in Brighton Beach Brooklyn and the final chapter of Neil Simon’s trilogy, including Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, and in postwar America people are starting to pursue their dreams. Eugene and his older brother Stanley want to become comedy writers and they think that now is the time.
The message in Broadway Bound is timeless – family dynamics, changing values, and how nothing stays the same. This story is about a family growing up, growing apart and moving on.
Simon Wiesenthal devoted six decades of his life to hunting Nazis, bringing 1,100 war criminals to justice including Adolf Eichmann. Intelligent, funny, flawed and noble, Wiesenthal was an ordinary man who became a universal hero.
Their execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Was being Jewish in the McCarthy era the tipping point to their arrest and immediate and complicit guilty verdict? A lesson in how xenophobia is dangerous at any time in history.
Set in 1942, a funny and poignant coming of age story that focuses on Jay and Arty Kurnitz, who are sent to live with their domineering German-Jewish grandmother while their father travels south to look for work. Neil Simon’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play follows the family as it struggles with the moral and social issues of the time. Over the course of the play the young boys learn about love, responsibility and important of family that will carry them into adulthood.
One of Arthur Miller’s last plays, written in 1994 exposes a marriage, social consciousness, personal responsibility and Jewish identity. In 1938, the reverberations of Kristallnact are felt by Sylvia & Philip Gellburg, after the events are publicized in the newspapers. An autobiographical reference by Miller, taking a look at his own Jewish identity?
A collage of all the Jewish Radio Hours broadcast throughout the Golden Horseshoe between 1938 – the late 50’s. An hour of news, views and top notch Yiddish entertainment, where listeners could connect with each other and the broader Jewish world. The Jewish Radio Hour is a piece of Canadian Jewish history that we can all share proudly.
Scooter and his wife Daryl are long time left-leaning academics when Scooter starts to drift to the right. Their differences come to a head when their old-time mentor and friend, GW, a celebrity left-leaning professor, suddenly appears at their home. The secrets revealed add fuel to the fire of love and betrayal.
“Amusing, lubricious and a bit heart-tearing” – The Jewish Daily Forward.
“A savagely witty satire of elite American academics and their attitudes towards the Middle East” – The New Republic.
Max Farber, the Jewish owner of a Montreal delicatessen, a survivor of Auschwitz, believes that the new nationalism arising in Quebec is the 1930s revisited. On the evening of the biggest ice storm in years, he decides to teach his stranded French-Canadian waitress and her ultra-nationalistic boyfriend the meaning of oppression.
Timely and thought provoking. The Canadian première of this award-winning play.
In this comedy-drama, a daughter pays a rare visit to her comedian father, announcing that she is changing her name. After his humourous inquiry, she admits that she wants to hide her father’s identity so she can get a role in a play on Broadway. What needed to stay hidden? What is revealed when the play’s director makes a surprise visit?
“A little gem all around” – Baltimore Sun
“Hilarious” – Dallas Morning News “Deft and funny, with heart” – Detroit News
“Funny, wise, moving, and thoughtful” – Chicago Magazine
“Very moving, beautifully written” – Chicago Tribune
Sold out nightly when we first produced it in 2004, this award-winning adaptation from the award-winning novel is the story of two boys, two fathers and two very different Jewish communities —”five blocks and a world apart”. If you liked MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, you’ll love this play.
“It’s not often that a theatre production is able to do justice to a great novel and a great movie, but TEATRON Theatre’s production… proves beyond a doubt that it can be done. Brilliantly Directed” - Town Crier, Sandie Benitah.
“A vivid and timely theatre piece. You don’t have to be Jewish or religious to enjoy the work.”
- Jewish Tribune, Barbara Shainbaum.
The Reznicks are not your average immigrant family. Having arrived in L.A. in the mid 1950’s, Nathan and Sarah are a walking contradiction. Hallowed veterans of a right-wing Jewish underground in pre-independence Jerusalem, they are staunchly nationalistic, yet they live in L.A. far from their cherished homeland. Why?
SEVEN DAYS follows the Reznick family in two parallel time periods separated by 15 years: The seven day mourning period following Sarah’s death in 1990, and the several weeks preceding their youngest son Barack’s abrupt departure
in 1975.
HANDLE WITH CARE opens somewhere in a nondescript Virginia hotel room. An Israeli woman, Ayelet, is screaming in Hebrew at a flustered DHL clerk how speaks only English. The clerk has lost an important package. From such an inauspicious beginning, a romantic comedy unfolds.
“Ari Weisberg has done a splendid job staging this comedy… A fun, light-hearted production of a fun light-hearted play.”
– Mark Andrew Lawrence, North York Mirror
“A series of hilarious mishaps and miscommunications played to the hilt by a talented cast.”
– Doris Epstein, Shalom Toronto
From the writers who brought us THE CHOSEN comes the great story about the journey of a young Jewish man, a painter, torn between his Hassidic upbringing and his desperate need to fulfill his artistic promise. When his artistic genius threatens to destroy his relationship with his parents and community, young Asher realizes he must make a difficult choice between art and faith.
“A profound declaration of the power of storytelling on a stage.” – Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Thought-provoking, humorous and deeply insightful.” – Talkin’ Broadway.
Rabbi Sam Isaac wants to reinvent American Judaism, and the congregation that hires him. Some people love the new rabbi. Some can’t stand him. And, of course, some can’t stand each other. Funny, moving, bursting with energy and ideas, RABBI SAM is a play for Jews, Gentiles and anyone who has ever attended a meeting.
“Wildly entertaining… skillfully blends hilarity with serious food for thought.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Charlie Varon’s visionary Rabbi Sam leaves audiences rapt.” – SF Weekly
“Riveting” – J Weekly
Jack Shore is appearing for one night only in a tribute to his grandfather, Jacob Shemerinsky, great star of the Yiddish Theatre. Backstage in his dressing room, Jack confronts his challenges as an actor and as a husband to his co-starring wife. Simultaneously, 75 years in the past, Jacob has problems of his own. A dizzying display of life in the theatre in this time-traveling farce.
“Time transcending… beautifully showcased humor… witty with a shmeer of the absurd.” – ChicagoTheaterBlog.com.
“A beguiling comic love letter to the American theater and its Yiddish roots to… a whole lot of laugh-out-loud escapades.”
– Chicago Sun-Times.
From the pen of HARD LOVE’s playwright Motti Lerner, comes a powerful drama taking a bold look at the role of one man in the cruel game of state-powers. When an American Jew is caught transferring valuable information to Israel, issues of political corruption, love and the respective governments’ own interests come to the fore. Based on the story of Jonathan Pollard.
After the untimely death of his wife, American dentist Barry impulsively makes his first trip to Israel to visit his long-estranged younger brother Yosi, who had made his home there for years. Happiness at the reunion is immediately challenged by clashes in politics. A TINY PIECE OF LAND premiered last year in Los Angeles where it played to sold-out houses.
After the untimely death of his wife, American dentist Barry impulsively makes his first trip to Israel to visit his long-estranged younger brother Yosi, who had made his home there for years. Happiness at the reunion is immediately challenged by clashes in politics. A TINY PIECE OF LAND premiered last year in Los Angeles where it played to sold-out houses.
Hanna and Franklyn are a perfect Jewish couple who desperately want to have a child of their own, but can’t. A young woman from Iowa, pregnant and God-fearing, offers them to adopt her baby. Just before the adoption papers are signed, the couple realizes that she doesn’t know they’re Jewish. Fearing that this may put the adoption in jeopardy, they decide to pose as Lutherans—but how far are they willing to go to have a family?
In this fiercely romantic drama, Hannah and Zvi are reunited after divorcing twenty years earlier. Raised in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim, the couple ended their marriage when Zvi turned his back on Judaism and Hannah did not. Now the teenage children from their second marriages have become romantically involved, forcing Hannah and Zvi back into each other’s lives.
The Liebermans are typical Canadian secular Jews. The Noys are typical Israeli secular Jews—and now, neighbours to the Liebermans. Differences of mentality and mannerism lead to tensions, but when their children fall in love with each other and with Judaism, the parents find that they have much more in common than they thought.
15 years old Eugene Jerome is growing up in Brooklyn in 1937, fantasizing about becoming a baseball star while observing, in his witty, perceptive and funny way, his family’s way of living, rising to the challenges that face them with pride, spirit and a marvellous sense of humour.
An uplifting love story spanning the events leading to the birth of Israel, from illegal immigration to life on a Kibbutz as told through the eyes of a group of Holocaust survivors, who, in the process, became participants in the greatest Jewish adventure since Biblical times.
From the award winning author of I’M NOT RAPPAPORT and A THOUSAND CLOWNS comes a powerful and funny play about three generations of a Jewish family on NY’s Lower East Side, featuring a large cast.
When Ben’s gentile fiancé finds out that she is really Jewish, Ben and his family all react in different ways to her enthusiastic total immersion in her new found tradition.
THE DYBBUK is a love story of a different kind, where other-worldly forces are at work in a simple
village in Eastern Europe. This
romantic drama, born in the Yiddish Theatre, has transcended its cultural context to become a classic of the modern theatre.
Chaim Shotsky, a retired mailman in Brooklyn, is an American Tevye. His exotic tale is rich with vitality. His friends include a philosophical baker, his son and daughter, a matchmaker to end all matchmakers, movie star pigeons and a host of Israelis.
The Last Night of Ballyhoo is a bittersweet comedy set in Atlanta during the Christmas of 1939.
Gone With the Wind is having its world premiere and Hitler is invading Poland. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s elitist German Jews are more concerned with finding the best dates and dresses for Ballyhoo, the social
event of the season. Hidden prejudices, family secrets and a longing for their roots make this romantic comedy a hit.
A dramatic comedy about love, friendship and the supernatural that will bring you laughter and tears.
In an old inner-city synagogue, a group of old friends meet for their regular minyan on a winter morning. They are not all devout; one is a comic atheist who says he only comes to keep warm, and another is a young agnostic lawyer brought in from the street to complete the required quorum of ten men. It all changes when one of the men brings his granddaughter, who he believes is possessed by a spirit, a dybbuk. While the men try to arrange for an exorcism, their own true beliefs, life stories and problems come to the forefront, culminating in a surprising ending.
A fast-paced drama dealing with anti-Semitism in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Three very different sisters get together for the eldest’s 54th birthday. Unexpected romance, recriminations, reconciliations and acceptance occur in this hilarious and thought provoking comedy.
This heart-warming comedy tells the story of a young man in search of spiritual identity. Isaac begins by informing the audience that “things may go a little differently tonight because my mother is in the audience” and, from the audience, his mother becomes a persistent presence in the play. Various characters that he encounters in funny and touching scenes offer a confounding array of possible positions to adopt while two women, his wife and his childhood best friend, significantly affect the path of his journey.
A fast-paced drama dealing with anti-Semitism in the U.S. Army during World War II.
When a group of soldiers volunteer for a dangerous mission to a Japanese-occupied island, prejudice, fear and friendships are exposed and tested.
TEATRON first presented two dramatic readings of This Night in
the summer of 2002 and a workshop production of the play in the spring of 2003 at the Theatre Aquarius Studio
in Hamilton as part of the Hamilton Fringe Festival: Stage-managed
by Gabriel Cropley and featured
Gary Graham as Benny, Michael Posthumus as David and Irving Dobbs as Hellman.
... Bringing Great Jewish Stories to Life
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